Wednesday, November 2, 2011

The feminine subject

The male gods which I identified as feminine subjects are also portrayed as feminine physically or at least as not-men (i.e. youths, beardless, and pretty)


The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a mature male, bearded and robed. He holds a fennel staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked youth: the literature describes him as womanly or "man-womanish".

Apollo is the ideal of the kouros (a beardless, athletic youth)

During Archaic Greece he was usually depicted as a mature man, bearded, dressed as a traveler, herald, or pastor. During Classical and Hellenistic Greece he is usually depicted young and nude, with athleticism, as befits the god of speech and of the gymnastics, or a robe, a formula is set predominantly through the centuries.

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